Thursday, 7 January 2010

To pay or not to pay

Iceland is taking a dramatic step in that it intends to ask its citizens if they are prepared to stump up £3 Billion to repay investors who lost their cash in the Icesave banking Scam.

Democracy in action. The logic of the President being that it is the people of Iceland who will have to pay, not the "State", not the "Government" but the wallets of ordinary Icelanders. So it is only fair that they should decide whether they will fork out the cash to investors. In return of course, if the ordinary citizens decide "fuck that, it wasn't our money the bank lost", the threats from the EU will be immense. No entry to Brussels etc, a boycott of Bjork songs

Call me old fashioned, but if I lose money on the horses, or lose money on the Stock Market, it's gone. I should have paid attention. I certainly won't be asking the workers of a company with worthless stock to pay me back my stake from their earnings. It's the chance I took.

The British Government will also be able to argue the case for Icelanders to repay a debt a bank racked up. I shall be watching the arguments on both sides with great interest.

UKIP would do well to get their arses over there and remind them that £3B is peanuts once the EU gets involved in "distributing" citizens cash.

Icelanders. Tell Gordon Brown and stupid investors to fuck off. We all do.

Perhaps the people who live in the council areas where their esteemed investors felt fit to put their customer's cash into this particular scambucket would like to lift their middle digits when they get their next bill?

By the same token we should be lynching Parliament for borrowing a hell of a lot more money with barely a squeak from MPs. Where was our referendum on that?

Why are they coming down hard on Iceland? Easy, the population of Iceland used direct action to oust their Government and they'll do it again if needs be, and now they will be getting a direct say in whether they want to pay the debts of companies who happen to be in their country. That needs to be stopped lest other voters get similar ideas.

Iceland is the benchmark now. An ideal. If their President can say 'It must be put to the people' why didn't our PM or Queen? Push that line hard at election time. None of the main parties can stomach it.

Council and other 'authority' financial officers and the Government's instructions to them are the problem, not Iceland. They were incentivised to get high returns on their investments and seemingly never gave a thought to whether our millions they had secreted in foreign banks was covered in any way.

The FSA had a blindspot. The Government had a blindspot. The Councils had a blindspot. And they all want to blame Iceland?

My local council is short £4million having invested money in Iceland Banks.How much are the people employed by my council paid, and has any been sacked as a result of this fuck up?Their excuse thus far is that they were advised Iceland was a safe bet.If councils are going to invest on the advice of others like lemmings.Then they should have employed a REAL lemming to lose the money.Far cheaper than a civil servant and no pension to worry about(as a real Lemming kills itself at the end of its useful life).I'm sticking the boot in via my local press as well.

iceland was FLOODED by cash and many people fell for it.....the banks were offering high interest rates.......and of course this appealed to many........especially lots of uk pensioners who get f/a on their savings here.........and guess who is responsible for that?

the councils etc that lost money should sack ALL of the so called fund managers......and all the so called treasury advisors on £100,000+ too.........the problems were highlighted for at least ONE YEAR in advance in the press!

perhaps if they ACTUALLY did some work instead of just relying on a Bloomberg terminal they may have saved the PUBLIC £millions?

as usual-no accountability....'it wasnae me'!!!!!!!!!!

YOUR COUNCIL TAX WILL RISE TO MAKE UP thier LOSSES!!!!!FEEL HAPPY ABOUT THAT?

OUR crooked govt. rammed through its bailout pdq-remember it was gordon who set up the lloyds/hbosh merger-after a cocktail party!!!!!!!! just imho to save votes in halifax/jockistan etc.....

and all presented as being good for US!

Barclays raised money at 12% and 8% abroad.........and they are doing ok........my local branch is being refurbished currently.

still its only money-why dont we just print more and we will all be rich?give the eu all our money......its so nice being rogered-for nothing in return!

Gordon and his partners in crime will NEVER do anything for the British people.........

and apparently 31% will still vote labour? how dumbed down are our schools really?

I am a capitalist. But what I see around me is not capitalism, because failure has been socialised. if I choose to put all my money in a bank that I have made no effort to confirm is safely solvent I deserve to have my money at risk. Sadly, people of this country have forgotten that risk exists as every example of the slightest risk, personal or financial is an excuse to increase the size of government.

If I was a Icelander and I was told I could vote to not pay for other peoples lack of care and attention and by doing so I would be punished by not being allowed to join the EU I doubt I would have to pause for thought too long.

OH, why don't you join UKIP and help ? The LPUK is fine for discussing drugs but fuck all use to anyone in the short term. The GE is few months away and there's a lot to be done, UKIP is the only libertarian party to vote for at present, give 'em some help... we can all discus drinking on the tube and nasty drug laws after the hard work has been done.I can't speak for Lord Pearson or Nigel Farage but I doubt they are sitting around on their arses discussing the intellectual niceties of cannabis legalisation, they will facing up to problems that the other parties won't touch.

There's a Facebook group - unfortunately in Iclandic -http://www.facebook.com/InDefence& also a website (which Google will translate)www.Indefence.isPerhaps some support from you guys (and gals) would be good?

Regulatory authorities in the UK and the US who ignored the dodgy securitisation of subprime mortages and allowed these poisonous instruments to destroy the global financial system, are directly to blame for the Icelandic bank disaster. They have impoverished millions of savers around the world.

It is these authorities, their political cronies, complicit banksters and international ratings agencies that failed properly to rate millions of dollars of junk paper, who should be hauled into court.

Well done Iceland, don't pay back a penny.

Ignore the empty threats of the toothless Brown. He will shortly be on his knees begging the IMF to deal with 2 trillion pounds of debt he ruinously incurred and which every UK taxpayer will be repaying for the next three generations.

By June this witless imbecile will be out of office and his appalling political party rightly destroyed.

Never trust anyone from Iceland during the Cod War I was working undercover on a secret mission for the British Intellingence service. I had been tasked with sabotaging the Icelandic fishing fleet. My mission included picking up big strapping hairy fishing boat captains in shore side bars and taking them back to my flat, where I was expected to get some pillow talk. Sadly I only ever got as far as my second captain......Oooh matron he was such a stud muffin and just couldn't get enough of me. Some mornings I could hardly walk. Needless to say having found this Premier Icelandic cock slinger, I couldn't drag myself away and entice other captains. Hence my controllers got rather cross with me and aborted my mission. Just before I was due to leave I confessed to my lover who I shall call Captain Meathook (not his real name darlings.) The ungrateful fucker gave me a damn good thrashing with birch twiggs and called the Icelandic plod. Turns out the Captain was really a intelligence operative himself. I was later exchanged at the end of the conflictand sacked by M.Changing the subject I see over on the on the Torygraph TUG is being given a hard time by Professor Colin Berry HMB and Brendano for stealing my account and name Shanghai. There is only one Shanghai and I am he Spartacus a giant amongst bloggers with 10'000 hits a month on the Indy and the BNP fear my power. Must dash my multi-billion empire needs me in Las Vegas.

Why doesn't HMG sue the credit rating agencies that gave AAA ratings until the collapse? I wouldn't mind mortgaging my grandchildren's future to save the bankers if some of my money could have been used to buy rope to hang 10,000 bankers at random. It would have made great telly.

The FSA had a blindspot. The Government had a blindspot. The Councils had a blindspot. And they all want to blame Iceland?

Bollocks- There were two clear and binding rules regarding Local Authority investments.

1. Any Investment had to be secured

2. It had to be liquid

Treasurers up and down the land place our money on deposit without security, locked in for upto two years. I know because only the LPUK challenged North Somerset on these poinrs, the three major parties effected a cover up. Only one Lib Dem Peer went on the record to say this was illegal. He was told to shut up by Clegg, because of Lib Dem Councils.

There should have been mass sackings and criminal prosecutions, even the Audit Commission put their cash into Iceland.

I saw the earlier comment about UKIP being a Libertarian Party, very good, if you have not got what the first inkling of Libertarianism is.

Guthrum, Ukip is not the ideal libertarian party, it may not even be a libertarian party by your definition ....but it is the only non-authoritarian party in town ....apart from the few hundred votes frittered away on idealism and LPUK Lets say that UKIP are a pragmatic realist type of libertarianish party, they will get you out of the EU and let you smoke a cigarette in the warm and dry.... good enough for a start or are you silly enough to expect everything now? I do believe you are, but the comment about UKIP was addressed to OH who I believe to possess a more realistic outlook on life.

So, no, UKIP aren't even slightly libertarian, then are they? What else will you rightous superhumans 'let me' do, if I suck your cocks enough, eh?

Don't take the piss ~ many in UKIP are just right wing bigots who think it is 'libertarian' to be able to smoke their pipes in their pubs, pay low taxes, and not see too many brown people littering up the village green. The thought of people like that deciding what they will 'let me' do doesn't float my boat.

Harry, as for sucking cocks...if you want that traditionally you go to lab or Libdem. Let means without hindrance, with no objection or restraint, I could have typed a fucking page to explain more clearly to the pedants but I didn't. Still it gave you the chance to get rid of a few stock phrases, so that's good.UKIP has members from right and left, if you like that sort of definition, and a member is quite as likely to be ex-labour as ex-tory. All parties have suddenly become aware that the British people as a whole are a bit miffed about the fill rate of village greens with brown peaceable people and are adapting their policies as quick as they can to stop loosing votes... it's called democracy, the will of the people..

Tell us all what you are doing to get us out of this fucking nightmare... I'm sure OH will give you room....

UKIP may have started with good intentions,but they are now just an establishment tool wheeled out to damage BNP support if they look like causing an uspet. Dagenham & Barking. Haddock,you've been had.Urban11

urban11,just who is doing the wheeling ?.... and if I've been 'had' what do I do.... hope there is a fucking 19 year-old in my costituency standing for LPUK on a 'drinking on the tube ticket' so that I can give him vote number 40 !

We don't need any more clever fuckers with theories on governance that would be nice in an ideal world, we want voters to chuck the labour cunts out, stop the labourclone cunts and/or the orange fencesittingeurophilecunts taking over their mission. We need votes for the only party with a realistic or even half realistic chance of hoofing the cunts where it hurts, in the ballot box. We want people to persuade other people, in enough numbers to vote the bastards out. Time for idealism after the poll or after the ensuing rioting if Labour get back in.

Ron Broxted you are an unmitigated cunt. Fuck off back to the Indy where nobody is interested your gay/socialist arse stabbing crap either. I see that you have been thrown off my telegraph again as Shanghai what a hoot. Admit it TUG is too fucking good for you and took your scalp yet again, sweet. Ha ha ha.

The final two paragraphs: "Both Cllr Ashton and council chief executive Graham Turner paid tribute to the work carried out by the council's finance department in what were clearly difficult economic circumstances.

Cllr Ashton added that, due to the work of the department, it wasn't exposed to the crisis as badly as many other public bodies."

'Don't look at what we did, look at what we're doing' AND 'Other people made bigger mistakes' are not good enough.

I've been trying to find out more about the legislation and guidance governing local authority investments. On the face of it is quite a decentralisation - local authorities were granted greater freedom to invest idle money in specified and non-specified investments.(See Part 2 of GUIDANCE ONLOCAL GOVERNMENT INVESTMENTS) It also recommends that an Annual Investment Strategy be drawn up and approved by each local authority.

They were allowed to determine their own mix and definition of safe and risky investments and some clearly were not up to the job. Central Government saying 'local authorities should be prudent' doesn't automatically make it so and nor does an approved Annual Investment Strategy guarantee success but, while returns were positive few appear to have looked that gift horse in the mouth.

I don't think I should pay for the debts of Dubai property speculators. I earned nothing from them. All I did was lend my deposits to banks - who gave me 2 or 3% then lent 10 times my deposit on at 6 or 8% ( ie 60 to 80% )- which were regulated but who then risked it on bets which paid them bonuses win or lose. I'd love to bet horses where the taxpayers picked up the losses but I kept the winnings, but I only bet 10 times the stakes of other people to do it while giving them 5% of the winnings in return. Casino capitalism with loaded dice.

If the Icelanders vote against paying the money back I will regard it as sharp business practice, but I will understand why they did it. And is it morally any worse than the billions McDoom wrote off after all those third world dictators stuck it in Swizerland but we lent them for their people to spend?

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is it's justice; that is its morality.